


The Abyss Gazes Back

by CrimsonShades



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: A Shooting Star will cry, Alternate Timeline, Angst, Because plot is hard, But that's forbidden love!, Human!Bill, M/M, Older!Dipper, get ready for run-on sentences, sort of, there will be smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:09:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5815438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonShades/pseuds/CrimsonShades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you</i><br/>-Friedrich Nietzsche</p><p>Ten years after making a decision that changed not only his life, but also those of everyone around him, Dipper is forced to make another choice. History might just repeat itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Abyss Gazes Back

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna try something new for once! Something with a plot, stretched over multiple chapters, something serious, you know, getting out of that good ol' comfort zone.

"One of the most important things to learn, kid, is to not always just use your head."  
Dipper tilted his head and gave his great uncle a puzzled look. "Okay. And why not? I mean, wouldn't it make sense-"  
Stan cut the young boy short when he raised a hand and Dipper went silent, a frown on his face.  
"Don't waste your whole life planning and thinking like my brother Ford."  
Dipper's look shifted into one of the _Are you kidding me_ -variety and Stan responded with a gristly laugh that threw the boy off even more.  
"Ah, but don't make the same mistake as me, either. You still have to use your head sometime. If you never think, you're gonna end up like me; a failed businessman who's been crashing at his nerd brother's house for the past thirty years."  
Dipper shook his head. "Then what am I supposed to do?"  
"It's a matter of balance." Stan's smile held the sadness of a life gone to waste.  
Stuck in a small town in roadkill county Oregon, living with his twin brother who hated him for ruining his life, Stan made a living with scamming tourists in their tourist trap home, the Mystery Shack.  
None of his relationships had ever worked out, as he had confided to Dipper, even his wife had divorced him after only six hours.  
"I could probably use to use my head sometime," another laugh. It sounded tortured this time and made Dipper put a tiny hand on his uncle's much larger, much hairier arm and give the old man a sympathetic look. Stan gave the action a warm smile, which Dipper bashfully returned.  
"But not like my brother. He's got a big brain and he's using it, too. He's too smart for his own good."  
Just when Dipper opened his mouth to protest, Stan interrupted him again. "Nerd's got so many PhD's and look where it got him? He's stuck here, just like me."  
"This is his house." Dipper pointed out.  
"And I'm the breadwinner, what's your point?" His uncle snarled and the boy jerked away from him.  
"Listen," Stan raised both his hands in a defensive manner, "what I'm saying is, he could be a great success. He sure was in school. He could never make it with the ladies, sure, but the truth is, ever since we had that fight half a lifetime ago, something went wrong with him. When I found him, thirty years ago, he had been living in this town for six years, without making a single friend. All he did was hide away in his fancy house in the woods and threaten trespassers with a crossbow like some paranoid cuckoo-person." Stan shook his head. "Something sure happened with him, but he never talks about it. So, kid. Do me a favor. Don't make the same mistake as either of us. Listen to your heart from time to time, too. In the end, it's about balance."

Stan's words were still echoing through Dipper's head when he joined his friends after lunch.  
Ford had asked them to retrieve the Shapeshifter, which had escaped its prison when the cryo chamber previously holding it malfunctioned.  
Dipper and his twin sister Mabel didn't mind running errands like that for their great uncle at all. In fact, it made their summer a lot more exciting. Dipper loved the thrill and mystery of the paranormal and Mabel enjoyed going on adventures with her brother. Their friends, the Mystery Shack employees, Soos and Wendy, a soft-spoken Hispanic who could pass for either a bald panda or a giant man baby and a laid-back, redheaded lumberjack daughter who Dipper had a crush on, came along whenever they could sneak away from work. The call of the adventure was hard to ignore.  
Mabel knew of Dipper's little crush and tried to make him confess, which caused Dipper and Wendy to be separated from the others. The Shapeshifter took Wendy's form and joined them, which made things all the more confusing. It tried to steal the Journal Ford had given Dipper, because it contained information about the being they were dealing with - among many other things.  
Eventually though, the four of them managed to shove the gelatinous creature back into one of the still working cryo chambers and freeze it. Its bloodcurling screams still echoed through the underground vault when a very shaken Dipper moved to pick up his Journal.  
Somewhere during the fight, it had fallen to the ground and opened. He furrowed his eyebrows when he saw what page it had landed on. The mysterious Creature 326, a strangely dapper triangular being with one large eye. This page never ceased to puzzle the boy, but when he'd asked Ford about it, the old man only asked if Dipper trusted him. When the boy answered yes, his six-fingered uncle responded that he could trust that this wasn't important right now. A dissatisfying answer, to say the least and one that left Dipper all the more eager to uncover the secrets of this weird creature. But no matter how many times he read through the three Journals Ford had recorded his findings in, there were no answers. If anything, the crossed out paragraphs and blood splatters on the pages only rose more questions.  
The boy shook his head to clear it, picked up the heavy book and hurried to join the others who were waiting for him near the stairway that lead out of this admittedly creepy, abandoned laboraty.  
As they climbed up the stairs, Mabel kept gesturing at Wendy and Dipper had to think about what Stan had told him earlier that day. His head insisted that it was a bad idea and confessing would ruin their friendship. But his heart clung to the slim chance that Wendy might just like him back, that it could work out and things would be wonderful.  
When he raised his head and felt the blood rise to his cheeks, his sister gave him the widest smile. As soon as they were back on the familiar soil of the forest, Mabel asked Soos for a piggy back ride back home and the two of them left.  
Suddenly being alone with his crush made Dipper's heart accelerate past human levels and he tried to think of excuses to make to his sister when he bailed now and raced back to the Shack, until he finally cleared his throat.  
"Wendy, I, um. I need to tell you something."  
She turned around to him, as she had watched Soos and Mabel take their leave and gave Dipper a smile that made his throat dry up. It took him several attempts and the final result of his confession was an awkward, stuttered mess.  
"Wendy, I'm, like, in love with you. I've been since I first saw you and I- I-" He stopped hen he noticed that he'd already said the most important part, screwed his eyes shut, bit his lip and wished he could just disappear. Fade away into nothingness.  
It felt like a hot, sweaty eternity of awkwardness until he felt Wendy's hand on his shoulder. She explained that she was way too old for him and just when Dipper was convinced that this was it, this was the part where he'd die, she said that she'd love to be friends with him nonetheless.  
"This summer was bound to be super boring until you came along. I'd love to go on more adventures with you." She smiled.  
She also punched him, but it was a playful punch, nowhere near as painful as Dipper had anticipated. Everything turned out better than he expected. She didn't rip out his heart, she didn't laugh at him. But still.  
The sun was about to set, so Wendy had to run home. She assured Dipper she'd see him tomorrow and he managed a smile before he sat on a log. His knees felt like jello. A heavy sigh escaped the boy.  
He felt better, like a weight had been lifted from his heart, but at the same time, there was this sadness running through him.  
"Just how can everything be so wonderful and amazing and at the same time, so horrible?" He asked no one in particular.  
Dipper jolted upright when he heard a cracking noise behind him and turned around only to see his great uncle Ford.  
"Would you mind if I had a seat?" He asked, to which the boy responded with a shrug.  
Ford sat down and for a few minutes, the two of them just sat there, staring into the nothingness.  
"You told her." Ford finally broke the silence. Dipper nodded his head.  
"How did it go?"  
"She said she was too old for me. That's ...okay, I expected that."  
"But you asked her anyway."  
"It was the only way to really make sure."  
Ford gave Dipper a warm smile. "I'm proud of you. That's what a scientist would say."  
Dipper flashed a lopsided smile of his own.  
"And I'm sure you would make for a great scientist." Ford went on in a dreamy voice until he suddenly shifted gears and went back to a much more serious tone. "Dipper, summer isn't going to last forever. And I'm not getting younger, either. There's still so many mysteries to this down that need to be researched and I'd like to keep it in the family."  
Dipper quirked an eyebrow. "What are you saying?"  
"I'm saying that I want you to stay here in Gravity Falls with me. Help me solve the mysteries of this town. I know you can do it, you've proven yourself time after time again."  
Dipper felt his face flush with joy. This was amazing! A dream come true! Except...  
"What about Mabel?"  
"I'm sure she'll understand." Ford hurried to say.  
"But... She would go back home, we've never been apart." Dipper thought aloud.  
"And isn't it suffocating?"  
He stared at his uncle, unsure of how to reply to that. There was a lot of baggage attached to those words, he was sure. Ford was looking at him, looking so expectantly. He really wanted him to do this. And wasn't it just perfect? Wasn't this what he'd dreamed of ever since he first saw the Journals, the strange and weird things all around Gravity Falls?  
"But-" The boy shook his head as he tried to sort his thoughts. "What about my parents?"  
"Dipper, I have twelve PhDs." Ford laughed softly. "Your parents would be thrilled I could give you such an advanced education."  
"Uh, well." That _was_ a pretty good point.  
Mabel would understand it, he was sure. She would want for Dipper to be happy. And she wouldn't be all alone, right? She could make friends in under thirty seconds, she was just social like that. Unlike him.  
For Dipper, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. And one that he couldn't just pass up.  
Especially when Ford asked "Haven't you ever felt like you were meant for something more?"

"Please understand!" Dipper exclaimed as he ducked to evade a unicorn plush being thrown at him. It hit the floor and glowed as a prerecorded female voice demanded that more of her acessories be bought. "This is a great opportunity for me!"  
"But it's a terrible opportunity for me!" Mabel screamed. Tears were running down her face.  
"Mabel, please."  
"No!"  
"Mabel!"  
"No!"  
Grumbling, Dipper packed his things, a task not exactly made easier by his sobbing twin sister launching pillows, sweaters and stuffed animals at him, and moved downstairs.  
The two of them didn't talk much for the rest of the summer until Mabel went home and Dipper stayed in Gravity Falls.  
Her eyes were red from crying and he could feel guilt eating away at his guts, but he was determined not to give in. Not this time.  
He loved Mabel, but just how far could this love go? She couldn't expect him to live a life he wasn't made for just for her sake. She couldn't expect him to just give up on everything that meant something to him because she demanded it.  
At least she hadn't tried to sabotage his future like Stan had tried to do with Ford's.  
When Dipper went back inside the Shack, he was surprised to see his Grunkle Stan drag a huge suitcase through the living room.  
"What's going on?"  
"I'm moving out."  
"What? Why?!"  
"I've got a couple friends down in Mexico. Don't worry about me, kid. Have a good life."  
"What about the Mystery Shack?"  
"She's closed down for good." Stan shrugged his shoulder.  
Dipper was beyond puzzled. Stan had almost the same look on his face as Mabel had, less than an hour ago, except angrier.  
The boy watched his uncle throw his luggage into this car, the Stanley mobile, and drive away.  
Ford stepped up to him and put a six-fingered hand on his nephews's shoulder.  
"He'll be fine." He promised. "I just figured we needed the space with you staying here. We won't have time for tricking tourists any more. We have science to do."  
"Right. Science." Dipper muttered. There was this feeling in his gut again, clenching and churning.  
This wasn't exactly the best way to celebrate his thirteenth birthday.  
With the Mystery Shack gone, Soos burst into tears. He desperate tried to find a job to sustain himself and his abuelita for the next few weeks, but eventually moved to Portland, to his girlfriend, Melody. He sent Dipper post cards every few weeks.  
Wendy was still around, but Ford's curriculum didn't leave Dipper with much time to hang out.  
Gravity Falls held so many wondrous things he needed to discover and he had only just scratched the surface. And despite the social isolation, Dipper felt happy.

"Happy birthday, Dippin' Dot!" Mabel's voice squeaked out of the speakers.  
"Happy birthday, Mabel." Dipper laughed at his sister's pixelated face on the screen of his laptop.  
"Did you get that photo from Soos and Melody?"  
"I sure did."  
"Isn't their baby just the cutest?" She squealed." I can't believe he's three already! Oh, did you ever get to see him in person?"  
Dipper rubbed the back of his head. "Not really. Ford and I are really busy, so..."  
"Oh." The mention of their uncle wiped the smile from Mabel's face. "Right."  
"So, uh, what did you get for your birthday?" Dipper quickly tried to switch the subject.  
"It's been ten years already, hasn't it?" She muttered. "It feels like just yesterday." He could see her wipe her eyes.  
"Mabel, please." He breathed and she quickly shook her head and flashed the brightest, braceless smile.  
"The guys are gonna throw a huge party for me today, they said. Oh, and mom and dad say hello."  
"Hello back. Did you ever hear from Grunkle Stan?"  
"Sure, all the time. He's doing alright. Doesn't he call you?"  
Dipper shook his head.  
"Oh, well. Maybe he's lost the number. I'll pass it on then!"  
"Thanks." He smiled even though he was pretty sure Grunkle Stan knew the Shack's number like the back of his hand. He just didn't want to talk to Dipper or Ford after he was practically kicked out of the house that had been his home for the last thirty years.  
Dipper couldn't blame him.  
"Did you get anything?"  
"Oh, well!" Dipper's expression brightened. "Not yet, but Ford promised me he'd show me something extremely special today!"  
"Even more special than that flying saucer he took you to on your eighteenth birthday?" She laughed. The quality of the video wasn't good enough for Dipper to tell if it sounded forced or not.  
"He said this is going to make the saucer look like a gnome by comparison!" He beamed and his sister smiled as well.  
"Don't overwork yourself, alright?"  
"Don't party too hard."  
"Do party sometime! Go out and be a normal, gosh, you're not even a teen any more! Go out and get laid, man!" This time, he was pretty sure the laughter wasn't real. He rolled his eyes playfully.  
"I'll see what I can do about itS. Have a happy birthday, Mabel."  
"You too, bro-bro." She waved at the screen and he returned the gesture before closing his laptop and hurrying downstairs where his uncle was waiting for him, his wide smile suggesting that he knew whatever he had in store would excite Dipper.  
"Are you ready for your present?"  
Dipper knew that tone.  
"Do I have to put on the blindfold?"

When he removed the cloth, the car, an inconspicuous dark one that had already been slightly out of date ten years ago but seemed completely out of place now, had come close to a large concrete colossus of a building with no visible windows and the only drive Dipper could see was hard to spot between the trees. The building was located in a forest and well hidden by the lush vegetation. They had been driving for a few hours so the young man was fairly certain that they weren't even in Oregon any more, but he didn't dare ask. He knew better than that. His uncles usually made him wear the blindfold for a reason, after all.  
He could spot no clue on what the purpose of this place was, other than likely being top secret, except for the insignia of an eagle and a human hand that held a magnifying glass to its eye.  
Ford opened the glove compartment, to which Dipper reflexively pulled his legs back and took out a small, black card that had the same symbol on it. He held it to a small box with a red light on it, it beeped, the light turned green and the huge door in front of them slid open, revealing what looked like a parking lot with a few black cars in it that reflected the artificial light.  
Dipper heard the sound of the huge door closing behind them as Ford parked and gave him a bright smile.  
"We're almost there."  
There were so many questions on Dipper's mind, he wouldn't even know which one to ask first. So all he could do was swallow, nod and get out of the car. Another door he hadn't seen before, much smaller this time, slid open on the back wall of the large room and two men approached them. Both wore plain, black suits over just as plain white shirts, each with a pin of the American flag in their suit's lapin. The slightly older one was also wearing a tie.  
"Stanford Pines." He greeted half of their visitors. His colleague, a younger man with close-cropped, light brown hair, simply nodded.  
"Agent Powers." Ford returned the pleasantry, then turned to the other man and gave him a nod as well as he said, probably for Dipper to hear the man's name "Agent Trigger."  
"This is your nephew, I take it?" Powers asked and Dipper hurried to nod his head. That seemed to be all the man needed to hear, as he stepped aside and gestured their visitors to follow him and Trigger, who already took large steps towards the door and hold it open.  
"Who are these men?" Dipper whispered to his uncle as they walked past Trigger, whose scrutinizing gaze sent shivers down the young man's spine.  
"Government agents." Ford replied as they entered a hallway as sterile-looking as the one they had just come from. Black doors on both sides, no labels or pictures, white walls, ceiling and floors and more bright neon lights.  
As soon as they had passed through the door, Trigger closed it and walked silently behind the Pines. Dipper could just feel the man's eyes burn a hole in his back.  
"So, this is a government facility?"  
Ford smiled. "Exactly."  
Dipper chewed on his lip as thoughts started racing through his head again and only picked up on speed as they reached a large metal door at the end of the corridor, that would have fit better in front of a vault than this place. A camera was sitting right next to it and Dipper could just hear it zooming in on them.  
Powers reached into a pocket and pulled out a card similar to the one Ford had previously used and held it close to the whirring lens. A small compartment opened and he entered a six digit code on a touch screen. The large door hissed and slowly slid open.  
Behind it was yet another hallway with bright neon lights, but Dipper was far too curious to be disappointed.  
This time, the doors to the left and right of them had metal doors with windows made of thick, likely bulletproof glas in them, there was a small grey box to the right of every door with a small sign above and to the left was a monitor about the size of the window.  
"Here they are." Powers announced and stepped aside to let Ford and a very puzzled Dipper in.  
This looked like what he had always imagined a high tech prison would be like ever since watching that one sci-fi movie at age eleven. Wide-eyed and mouth agape, which at least gave his lip a break, it was bleeding a lot due to his constant chewing on it when there was no pen in reach, he studied the sign next to the first door on his right. _Pyronica_ it read, the box had a slit, likely for the agents' security passes and another touch screen with numbered keys on it. Dipper assumed that the screens also took the finger prints of whoever was putting in the code. Clever.  
Had he hoped that glancing through the window would answer his questions, he was disappointed. The room behind the metal door was white, save for a few scorch marks on the wall and something in the far left corner that, from what he could make out, probably used to be a cot before it was burned to ashes. Besides that, the cell, that word felt more appropriate than room, really, held a pink, human-sized creature with one large eye. Its physique appeared to be female and vaguely humanoid, except it seemed to be on fire. On pink fire.  
The second it spotted Dipper, it jumped close to the door and pressed its face close to the glass while a long tongue slipped past its thick lips and licked them. It looked hungry. The sudden movement had Dipper backing away, which caused the creature to laugh.  
He glanced at the monitor and saw that it was a live-feed from the interior of the cell, just from a more elevated angle; the camera was likely somewhere in the ceiling.  
Bumping into the another door had Dipper rapidly jolt around. The sign next to this one read _Krytpos_ and the also one-eyed being behind it, its shape strangely resembling the symbol of the Freemasons, glanced at him, likely to investigate the source of the noise. Other than that, it seemed content just standing in the middle of the room.  
"What, what are these?" Dipper finally stuttered.  
"Demons." Ford's voice right beside his ear almost made him jump.  
" _Demons?_ "  
"They came into our dimension thirty years ago. Luckily, we managed to capture them before they could cause their chaos and tamper with the fabric of our reality."  
"So, they've been in here for thirty years?" Dipper stuttered.  
"Exactly." Ford nodded. "Yet we know nearly nothing about them."  
"Haven't they tried to flee?" Dipper was flabbergasted.  
"Look at their wrists." Ford pointed at the window. Kryptos was busy gazing at the windowless wall. Dipper squinted and had to press his nose against the glass until he could see it. The creature had a blue ring on each of its wrists, that emitted a soft glow.  
"Those cuffs effectively drain them of their powers and make them pretty harmless. As far as we know, anyway. That's why we still keep them under lockdown."  
"Not to mention the panic they would cause if they were free." Powers joined the conversation.  
"Panic." Trigger repeated solemnly.  
"These power-draining cuffs worked on all of them, except for their leader. We also needed to seal him in a human body before we could use them and get him under control." Powers explained. Dipper was too busy trying to process all of this information he was suddenly getting, to notice something shift in Ford's gaze.  
Just as he saw Powers open his mouth to add something, he raised both of his hands. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.  
So this faculty was built thirty years ago and exists only to hold these, these _demons_?"  
"Affirmative." Trigger confirmed and Dipper sagged against the door. Kryptos still didn't seem to bother.  
"That's- that's crazy."  
"Crazy it what would have happened if we had let them go free." Ford replied in a soft voice.  
The young man shook his head slightly. This wasn't too much, not since the day he learned he had been living on a crashed UFO for years, but there was just too much to this story that was missing. He couldn't piece it together.  
"So." He finally managed. "This is what you wanted to show me?"  
"This is only half of your birthday present." His uncle sounded truly proud of himself - and surely his idea. "We are going to conduct experiments on one of these and find out what they're really made of."  
Dipper knitted his eyebrows.  
"Back home."  
His mouth went agape. Ford pushed his chin up with a smile and he pressed his lips together.  
"I couldn't do this sooner because Stan surprisingly moved in with me. Besides, now we have much more advanced technology to keep them in line, should they choose to act out of line."  
Dipper slowly nodded his head.  
"And now for the best part." Ford practically beamed as he said that. "You get to choose which one we're going to research!"  
From the corner of his eye, Dipper could see the two agents trade a glance.  
"This is it? We're coming to this top secret government place where they keep freaking _demons_ and you tell me to just _pick one_ to take home, like this is a goddamn dog shelter?!" Dipper screamed. This was just too absurd.  
"Happy birthday, Dipper." Ford replied, unfazed.

Pyronica was out of the question. She was scary. Kryptos appeared to be rather phlegmatic, so Dipper moved on.  
The next two demons were _Hectorgon_ , a hexagon with a mustache that arouse the suspicion in Dipper that demons liked weird puns, and _Amorpheus Shape_ , a being with several eyes on a long, thin and colorful body. It stared at the young man, clearly not impressed. Hectorgon didn't seem to have any eyes.  
_8-Ball_ was next and the look it gave Dipper with its eyes that actually had pupils in the shape of the number eight made the boy shudder, so he hurried to move on to its neighbor, _Teeth_. A human-sized set of actual teeth with limbs. Not too impressive, but certainly strange.  
Dipper shrugged as he moved on to _Xanthar (The being whose name must never be said)_ and hurried past it to get to _Keyhole_ , mainly because Xanthar's face looked like a loaf of bread and the creature was huge. They could never keep it in the Shack, one way or another. Keyhole shot Dipper a bored look. The reason for its name was quite obviously sitting on its forehead. It made the boy want to put keys in it and see what happened, but he chose to save that for later and at least get a look at every being they kept in here before settling for one.  
Next up was a room filled with _Eyebats_ , large eyeballs with bat wings attached to them. They were restlessly fluttering about.  
"Those don't have cuffs on them!" Ford called out from behind, he had been studying a grimacing Pyronica until just now, and Dipper decided that these creatures probably wouldn't make too interesting a specimen. The corners of their cell glowed blue and he supposed that this was the same technology, if it even was technology and not some kind of magic, as the other demon's cuffs.  
Finally, he reached the last door on the hallway and almost had a heart attack when he glanced through the small window.  
Sitting there on its cot was unmistakably a human being. Gulping, Dipper glanced at the sign to make sure this wasn't a mistake, but all it read was _326_.  
The number rang a bell in the back of his head but for now, he was too busy staring at the man, certainly a man, wearing a used-to-be-white but was now filthy gown that reminded Dipper of hospital clothing and barely reached past his knees and whose physical appearance basically screamed starvation and neglect. His blond hair was dirty and reached well past the man's shoulders, stubby facia hair suggested that he had the same problems growing a beard as Dipper did, his skin looked unclean, his nails like they hadn't been trimmed in months. He had folded his hands on his bony knees, his bangs were covering his eyes and he was sitting completely still.  
Dipper could see the blue glowing cuffs on his painfully thin wrists, but he couldn't believe it.  
Besides, the man didn't look much older than his mid-twenties. Something about the way he just sat there, like a mental patient who had been through intense trauma, made something in the back of Dipper's head scream. It was just too terrible to see him sit like that.  
He heard the clicking of shoes on the floor behind him, but didn't even turn around when Agent Trigger explained that the man always sat like that.  
"Can't you at least wash him?" Dipper heard himself say with what was unndoubtedly anger in his voice. He couldn't take his eyes off the poor man.  
Trigger seemed confused and stepped beside the other to glance over his shoulder into the room.  
"Oh." He simply said.  
Dipper narrowed his eyes and followed the agent's gaze which was directed in the other corner, only to let out a surprised gasp.  
A large triangle with an eye had been painted on the previously white wall.  
It was drawn in blood.


End file.
